Did the UN Spread Cholera in Haiti?
Yahoo! News reports:
An outbreak of cholera has killed at least 442 people in Haiti over the last few weeks. Some public health experts are asking whether U.N. peacekeepers are responsible.
Last week, hundreds of Haitians denounced the peacekeepers at a protest. They suspected that a Nepalese U.N. peacekeeping base, located on a tributary to the infected Arbonite River, could have been the source of the outbreak.
Some preliminary evidence supports that suspicion. The strain matches strains found in Southeast Asia, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And Paul Farmer, an expert on poverty and medicine and the U.N. deputy special envoy to Haiti, told the Associated Press that authorities should investigate further. "Knowing where the point source is -- or source, or sources -- would seem to be a good enterprise in terms of public health."
John Mekalanos, a cholera expert at Harvard University, agreed, saying the evidence does suggest that Nepalese soldiers brought the disease to Haiti after an outbreak in Nepal. "The organism that is causing the disease is very uncharacteristic of [Haiti and the Caribbean], and is quite characteristic of the region from where the soldiers in the base came," Mekalanos told the AP. "I don't see there is any way to avoid the conclusion that an unfortunate and presumably accidental introduction of the organism occurred."
